


Gangsters Paradise

by MaddyBoo



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gangsters, Humanstuck, M/M, Mobsters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:01:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26554774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaddyBoo/pseuds/MaddyBoo
Summary: Karkat Vantas is simply trying to give himself a good life. Go to school, get a good degree, and stay out of trouble. When he starts walking the dogs of one of the city's most notorious gangster families, the Amporas, his life spirals out of control. Meanwhile, an opposing gang wants to get the upperhand on the Amporas and sends Dave Strider to keep track of Karkat.
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas
Comments: 1
Kudos: 31





	Gangsters Paradise

**Author's Note:**

> Heyooo, so this is basically going to be a way for me to destress during school. I'm hoping to update once every two weeks but no promises. Also tags will change as the story continues.

“C’mon Karkat, its going to a motherfucking miraculous time. Besides, my friend, you need to enjoy yourself sometimes.” Gamzee tries to convince you, watching for your reaction under hooded eyes.

You almost sigh in exasperation, continuing to walk alongside the stone wall signaling that you have almost reached the park. This has been an ongoing argument for a week now with him, and quite frankly you are already being stretched thin by being pulled in so many directions, literally and figuratively as you’re being pulled along the side walk by nine dogs. Being a dog walker is a decent job, considering you getting paid to walk around the city, but sometimes it gets a bit hectic. 

You halt the dogs, coming to a stop near the park entrance, and look over at Gamzee. He looks at you in earnest, with a lazy yet self-assured smile that says he knows you can’t say no to him. 

“Fucking fine, I’ll go with you; But, so help me god, if this turns out to be a rave with a bunch of brainless clowns standing around and waiting for a communal jerk off again you’re paying for my next semester.” You can already feel the twinge of self-loathing and regret pooling in the pit of your stomach. 

Gamzees eyes light up. “I knew you couldn’t say no best friend. I’ll pick you up at eight.” He grins. 

The dogs, all who had sat down patiently for your conversation to end, jump up excitedly as Gamzee saunters over to say goodbye. He takes great care to ensure he pets each dog before he begins to walk away, his insanely curly hair bouncing along with his every step. As he’s about to turn the block he shoots you wave, the purple jacket he’s wearing pooling around his arm. 

“Remember if the club sucks you’re gonna owe me thousands!” you yell after him gruffly. The dogs, all used to your tendency to yell, look up at you with annoyance at halting their walk again. 

“C’mon guys” you grumble before heading to the entrance. 

You pass through the golden gates structured between to stone lions, allowing you entrance into the park. Leaves crunch underneath your feet as you make your way inside, and you watch some fall quietly from the trees. As an autumn breeze drifts by you tug your sweater to cover your hands, trying to get away from the chilly afternoon air. Although you don’t want to go out tonight, much preferring to snuggle up in bed with hot chocolate while laboring over multiple school notes, you feel like you owe it to Gamzee. He’s been doing really great recently at staying sober, and you should take a night off to celebrate with him.

You begin to head towards the center of the park, contemplating what class you should focus on when you get back home. While you love the fall weather, you hate that September brings you unmeasurable amounts of stress into your life like a train running over a neglectful kid’s bike. Going into the medical field makes you want to tear your hair out, but you know you’ll have a safe and steady job if you can survive the next 2 years. 

Due to your deep contemplation of whether to work on medical immunology or to get through general chemistry two first, you don’t notice the red frisbee hurling at your head until it makes contact right above your left eye.

“What the fuck!” comes out of your mouth before you even understand what had happened, the dogs watching with confused interest as the frisbee drops like a bowling ball to the cement sidewalk. Your hand goes to your wounded face while your eyes drop to the ground to assess the weapon. 

“Oh shit, sorry bro!” a voice yells across the lawn, causing you to stop glaring at the object and focus all your intent on the perpetrator. 

The offender is half-walking, half jogging over to you, his bright red and white shirt ruining the soft palate of the fall day and only raises your irritation. The closer the man gets to you, the dogs become excited and half of them begin to bark at the guy, causing the guy to come up short about 10 feet away from your posse, where the dogs can’t get to him. The Newfoundland, whose name is Jack, takes a few steps towards you before carefully watching the stranger. 

“Hey, I would come over there and grab it but, I gotta say I’m more of a cat person than a dog person, you know? I’m not even convinced all of those are dogs, I mean one of them are as large as a horse.  
Is it even legal to walk a horse in the park? Are you like octomom, but with dogs? That could be a good TLC show. I can see it know, called Octopuppy or-” the man has a slight smile at his lips, but other than that you have no idea what expression is on his face because half of it is covered by insufferable shades. 

You can feel the anger and annoyance from being pulled out of your thoughts so brutally begin to bubble up, forcing a scowl onto your face.

As he begin to ramble you don’t even listen past the cat person thing, simply lean over to pick up the red frisbee from the ground, your bitten down nails gripping under the ledge to get a firm hold. You can see the other’s hand start to raise to try and catch the frisbee and you do a thing only the most assholish of assholes would do, but to be fair, you are an asshole. 

You begin to swing your arm in an arc, but you don’t release until he man is out of firing range. In fact, you whip the frisbee almost 180 degrees so it goes flying in the opposite direction because fuck this guy. 

The guy doesn’t really give much away as he watches the object fly through the sky. 

“Fucking assho-“you begin before the dogs give out a resounding bark and you’re pulled off your feet. 

Having thrown the frisbee yourself, the dogs thought it became a game and they rushed after the object. Unprepared to plant your feet, the mutts pull you off them till you land belly first on the sidewalk and they begin to drag you with how hard they are running after the toy. Out of reflex you let go of the leashes, the dogs scattering as your face stops the rest of your body from moving forward by getting scraped into the dirt. 

You want to fucking die.

You can hear the fucker laughing before you can even taste the dirt in your mouth. You take in a deep breath to steady yourself. And you would have been able to peacefully pull yourself off the ground until you felt the other man’s hand trying to help pull you up.

“I don’t need your help! In fact, I would rather peel my skin off with a butter knife and use it to strangle myself than have you help me. And when the last breath leaves my withering lungs, Ill cry in ecstatic bliss knowing I will never again have to see you and your asinine shades again.” You rant as you pull yourself back up to your feet, watching as one of the dogs claims the frisbee for his own. You try the best you can to ignore the man laughing as you straighten yourself out, telling Jack, whose your dog, to round up the other ones. It was a pain in the ass to train him, but it really pays off.

You begin to briskly walk towards the direction of the dogs, hoping to get yourself out of the most embarrassing situation you have created in a long time. You’ve managed to gather all the leashes back up, thanks to your dog rounding up the group, and begin to direct them towards the parks exit, wanting to escape before the man can recover from his laughing fit. You manage to make it a few steps from the entrance when you here a voice call out for you to wait up.

Very deliberately you pick up your pace, but the man who had, just seconds ago been keeled over laughing, jogs to catch up with you. You bite the inside of your check to resist the urge to tell him to fuck off.

“Hey man, wait up.” The man calls breathlessly, whether it was caused from the slight job or laughing you have no clue.

“What?” you almost growl. “Are you seriously going to harass me about a 3 dollar frisbee? You can have it back, but you have to get it yourself. I’m not going to risk having my arm shredded by taking it from him.” The dog who is happily walking with his newfound frisbee is Jellybean, who is the sweetest dog you have ever met, but the man doesn’t know that. To be honest you think its safer in the hands of the dog. 

“Nah, He’s probably going to enjoy it more than me” the man says, gesturing towards the dog. 

“Then what,” you begin in complete exasperation, halting your walk, “could you possibly want from me? Is your live so unbelievably pathetic that once you’ve assaulted somebody with an aim so atrocious you couldn’t hit the statue of liberty if you were a foot in front of it you then feel the need to follow them around like a lost duck?”

You see a grin start to spread at the corners of the man’s lips, and it sends a jolt of anger through you so deeply, you’re pretty sure your dead father could have been resurrected from his grave.

“Let me buy you a coffee. For, as you so eloquently put it, assaulting you with my atrocious aim”. You can tell by the tone of his voice and his smug grin that people find it hard to resist him.

So you absolutely relish the small twitch in his features when you respond with a “Fuck you”.

And with that, you walk away.

********************************************

At first you hated that your bro asked you to keep a tail on Karkat Vantas. Normally, you never would have even looked at the man twice down the street, especially since your lives were in such contrast you probably would never have even been on the same street as him at the same time. Unfortunately for Karkat, he got hired to walk the dogs of the Ampora Family, who is one of the most notorious mobster families in New York City, besides yours of course.

After watching Karkat for a week, you have found that he is the most boring person you could be tailing. Mondays to Thursdays he can be found at the local college campus, almost strictly in the medical/science building. He also never eats lunch, just pours over his schoolwork with a steaming thermos, of what you guess is coffee, curled into a fist. After his classes, he drives his car which needs a new muffler so badly he sounds like a racecar, drops his stuff off at his house and then starts the process of getting all the dogs to walk them. Also, he has the largest fucking dog. KArkat’s short, around 5’4, but this dog almost comes up to the dude’s chest. Then he stays at home until he can do the process all over again. He also has the most boring wardrobe you have seen and a part of you is expecting that his closet is filled with multiples of the same exact sweater. 

You have also learned that he is absolutely oblivious to who he is working for. And you know this because Dirk works at an electronic store, which is really only a fake storefront to hide the criminal enterprise your family runs, works with a guy named Sollux who’s friends with Karkat. From what Dirk has told you, Sollux tries to get Karkat to understand who the Amporas are, but he thinks Sollux is just fucking with him. 

So, after two weeks of trailing the most boring guy in New York, you decided to make it interesting.

While you stand outside of the park, watching as Karkat leaves, you reflect on how different Karkat was than what you expected. You figured it would be a good place to start if you hit him with a frisbee because then you could offer a drink to say sorry, thus making it easier to get information out of the guy. But how Karkat has responded was not what you expected at all. He was like a startled cat, puffing himself up and looking as threatening as possible. And then he rejected you.

Nobody has ever rejected a Strider. You could have anybody you wanted (relationship or friendship), and have had everyone you’ve wanted at the snap of a finger, but the absolute most boring man in New York turned you down? 

When you get home you flop down on the sofa and sigh loudly until Dirk looks over at you pointedly. 

“I hit him with a frisbee.” You sigh, playing up the dramatics.

“You hit him with a frisbee” Dirk repeats levelly.

“Yep.” You reply.

“You weren’t supposed to make contact.” Dirk cuts you off.

“Yeah, but it was hella boring. It was like watching paint dry, but if a snail was doing the painting so every stroke took like fucking 70 hours to complete. Besides, I figured I would get more information out of the dude if I could talk to him, ya know? I can have him absolutely swooning over me in no time, he will tell me everything.” you ramble on.

“I think you’re overestimating yourself” Dirk offers, knowing its going to edge you on.

“Are you kidding me? He’s going to be all over me like peanut butter and jelly. Just call me Belle Delphine, cause he’s going to be simping on me in no time.”

Dirk raises an eyebrow. “You want to bet on it?”

Well shit, you can’t back down from a bet.


End file.
